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McCain: 'Zero Dark Thirty' wrong

McCain said the film fell “hook, line and sinker” for enhanced interrogation's effectiveness. | AP Photo

By ASSOCIATED PRESS | 12/18/12 7:29 PM EST

The movie “Zero Dark Thirty” suggests the CIA’s harsh interrogation techniques led the U.S. to Osama bin Laden. Sen. John McCain watched the movie Monday night and says it left him sick - because it’s wrong.

McCain, who spent 5 1/2 years enduring brutal treatment by his North Vietnamese captors during the Vietnam War, has insisted that the waterboarding of Al Qaeda’s No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, did not provide information that led to the bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.

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Yet the movie, of copy of which McCain said he received Monday, indicates that’s how the United States found bin Laden. The filmmakers fell for it hook, line and sinker, McCain (R-Ariz.) said Tuesday.

Last year, McCain asked then-CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and he said the hunt for bin Laden did not begin with fresh information from Mohammed. In fact, the name of bin Laden’s courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, came from a detainee held in another country.

“Not only did the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden’s courier, Abu Ahmed, it actually produced false and misleading information,” McCain said in a speech on the Senate floor.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, backed up McCain’s assessment that waterboarding of Mohammed did not produce the tip that led to bin Laden.

McCain has said he opposes waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning, and any form of torture tactics. He said they could be used against Americans and that their use damages the nation’s character and reputation.

“I do not believe they are necessary to our success in our war against terrorists, as the advocates of these techniques claim they are,” he said.

Oh really, McCain, so the very same torture techniques that were successful in forcing you to publicly "confess" to your "war crimes" while a prisoner of war could never be effective against Al Qaeda's number 3 leader. Care to try again? How stupid do you think we are?

Question to someone who endured 5 ½ years of separation from his Military Unit and Loved Ones -

How do you justify 393 days of 'Virtual Solitary Confinement' while a Military Investigation is 'On-going' into your Son-in-Law's (Jacob Tate) 'Murder In Action' on January 2nd, 2011 in the Sangin Region of Afghanistan ?

To all the cowards (like Cheney) who believe torture works, answer this question:

In the Middle Ages when people confessed to being witches under torture - were they witches???

It showed me how low the GOP had fallen when under the pretend cowboy president we actually heard arguments FOR torture from people in the US - after we had been lied into a war of aggression in Iraq!!!!!

Of course there's still the statement made by then CIA Director Leon Panetta in the interview with NBC's Brian Williams:

WILLIAMS: I'd like to ask you about the sourcing on the intel that ultimately led to this successful attack. Can you confirm that it was -- as a result of water boarding that we learned what we needed to learn to go after Bin Laden?

PANETTA: It-- you know, Brian, in the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information and that was true here. We had a multiple source-- a multiple series of-- sources that provided information with regards to the situation. Clearly some of it came from detainees and the interrogation of detainees but we also had information from other sources as well. From Sigent intelligence, from imagery, from other sources that we had-- assets on the ground. And it was a combination of all of that that ultimately we were able to put together that led us to that compound. So-- it's-- it's a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got.

WILLIAMS: Turned around the other way, are you denying that waterboarding was, in part, among the tactics used to extract the intelligence that led to this successful mission?

PANETTA: No, I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees. But I'm also saying that, you know, the debate about whether-- whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always gonna be an open question.

WILLIAMS: So finer point, one final time, enhanced interrogation techniques -- which has always been kind of a handy euphemism in these post-9/11 years -- that --

Would have made a great President if GOP selected him as a candidate instead of the person who DID NOT go to Vietnam.

For real. So WHAT if President Obama was like 10 years old at the time? He SHOULD have been in Vietnam anyway.

Actually, if Obama had been in the pilot program instead of McCain, we'd have saved a few bombers. Tjose things are EXPENSIVE, and McCain crashed like a half a dozen of them.....including the one that he trashed before he was captured.

Oh really, McCain, so the very same torture techniques that were successful in forcing you to publicly "confess" to your "war crimes" while a prisoner of war could never be effective against Al Qaeda's number 3 leader. Care to try again? How stupid do you think we are?

Yes, that's exactly right. The torture techniques that were effective in getting McCain to make false confessions of war crimes were totally ineffective at getting al-Qaeda leaders to tell the truth. Of course, the real goal of Bush's torture program was to get false confessions of an alliance between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

Did both Clintons, algore, John Kerry, Madeline Albright, Harry Reid, et al, lie when they said the same exact thing a few years prior about Saddam and WMD? I have already had to put a liberal in his place this week for saying the same thing you posted.

McCain is very right. Read Ali Soufan, or anyone else who knows anything, and they will say that if anything, waterboarding KSM actually DELAYED the killing of bin Laden by giving us so many false leads.

Torture was successful in making McCain confess his "war crimes", torture was successful in getting info from terrorists, torture works on all humans given time - no one is strong enough to resist. You get bad info, you return to get more, better info. There's no escape - get it?